"These developments have made it clear that IT is the prime enabler for the healthcare industry," said Dr Nam. "Current examples of on-going advancements include consumer driven healthcare, preventive health research, tele-healthcare, biotech, and enhanced collaborative efforts between pharmaceuticals."

"Cloud technologies will result in better IT integration with health services over the coming years," he said. "Interestingly, one major innovation that many are expecting to see soon is a unified architecture for healthcare services. Such facilities will provide and improve on process scalability as well as total service-awareness for health providers."

"Current demands for improved healthcare services will see the emergence of next generation IT companies," said Dr Nam. "These new comers will be the ones who will help enhance the available medical services that we have now. As such, it is now a matter of when these IT market players will be able to work with the healthcare industry to produce the critical innovations that it currently needs."

"Collaboration with other IT providers such as Microsoft would help to deliver a better level of healthcare in Asia," said Dr Nam. "We are extremely pleased to be partnering with Microsoft to realise cost-effective healthcare solutions that are interoperable and which meet the needs of both patients and healthcare providers so that the entire health ecosystem can be engaged in achieving a more proactive and sustainable healthcare model."